Purity Squad

... which had only been on the market for about 20 years. Prior to that, diabetes was a death sentence. But even today it tethers the diabetic to a regimen of shots and blood testing, and they must always have some form of quick sugar on hand because injected insulin is never as good as one's own insulin at self adjustment for stress, exercise, etc. Now there are continuous glucose monitors that also dose the patient with insulin, but 75 years later there is no freedom for the diabetic to be completely spontaneous. But I digress.

This episode in the series is about a discredited doctor, hiding from the law, who comes up with a pill he calls "diabulin" that he thinks can substitute for insulin. The two crooks he is saddled with want to put the pill on the market immediately and not do any further testing, and the doc, a wanted man, is at their mercy. They decide to distribute the drug inside their state only, so in case there are problems they are not dealing with a federal rap. The state's public health lab does tests on the drug too. The doc's guinea pigs die after a few weeks from the side effects of the diabulin. So the crooks decide to pay off somebody who works in the state lab to replace the test rabbits with fresh rabbits to buy time to make more money off the drug.

What they didn't count on is the FDA testing their drug anyways. The FDA lab, being in Washington, is inaccessible to the crooks, plus they don't know about the FDA's involvement in the first place. When the FDA guinea pigs die of the drug, and people begin to die of the drug, yet the state lab's test rabbits are healthy, the FDA and the state public health lab get together and suspect tampering in the state lab. Complications ensue.

It is shown that the doctors of the diabetics warned them against trying such a new and untested drug, but the diabetics' desires to live a life free from insulin injections made them want to believe the claims of the crooks.

There are no small "rackets" selling drugs today. Just giant pharma corporations with teams of lawyers. And there is no marketing a drug in a single state either, so the FDA's extensive testing is involved in the marketing of all drugs. But this is an interesting look back. At this point the Crime Does Not Pay series is trying to come out of the gangster era and into the post War era with crimes and rackets that were relevant to the time. But even with all of this talk of scientific testing, there is gun play in this episode.